Reading Condi's mind

Did the Hamas victory last January have any discernable impact on the way Rice approaches international affairs?

Well, I think the Hamas victory definitely caused Rice to question the quality of the information she was receiving from the State Department people who told her that Fatah was a lock to win. I think it also shook her faith in the wisdom of pressing for elections everywhere in the Middle East. We haven’t heard much recently about the need for free and open elections in Egypt, for example.

I’d have to say that I am very sympathetic to the way Rice thinks, especially when you start to look hard at the alternatives. For example, there are plenty of people who overstate the case about how the Bush Administration was rude to our allies in Europe, which made them hate us, or how easy it would be to wake up tomorrow and convince the Iranians that they don’t want nuclear weapons, simply by saying that we want to be friends. For people who believe that history isn’t very important, it is easy to see major shifts in the temperature of the world, or the way people understand the world, as passing whims that a clever dealmaker can erase tomorrow. I think that Rice rightly believes that point of view is nonsense... I’d be very worried right now if the Secretary of State believed that the only things standing between us and a deal with Iran were good manners or wearing a colorful headscarf when she visited the Middle East.

At the same time, there is also something quite alarming about the idea of a chief diplomat who, deep down, believes that diplomacy is nonsense, or, more accurately, a way of managing a flow of events that is largely beyond the control of human actors. The danger of the historical perspective is that you stop paying attention to the details, because in the end the grand sweep of history will take care of the details. Your job is simply to set big events in motion and then manage the visuals. And I think that attitude is very dangerous, and I do think that is something we have seen repeatedly from this Administration.